Here is an image. This part is light gray, but you'd never know it from any of the screenshots.

The surface facing the screen, even though there is a directional light pointing right at it (I even tripled the intensity of it just to get it to show as light as it does).

Is there a way to get this shading to not be so extreme in both light and dark? While rotating the part the surfaces flash between light and dark, just a tiny adjustment can alter the color drastically:

Top surface is white, the back surface is close to the actual color.

Part rotated just a few degrees, top surface is now black.

I've been working in "Hidden lines removed" mode just to avoid this annoyance but now I need screen shots and there's no way to rotate the assembly into a position that doesn't look terrible. I have played with the light intensity and position for 4 hours now and just simply cannot get all the features to show clearly.

Is there a fix for this? I searched all morning, which is how I figured out how to adjust lighting, but seems like no matter what I do I can't avoid large pure white, and large dark black areas.

Yeah, as I mentioned that's what I've been doing all morning. Getting frustrated with making no progress. I've adjusted the ambient all over the map, moved all the point lights into a hundred different positions, but no matter what I do, it seems a few surfaces are either bright white or dark black, despite there not being a single white, or black component in my assembly.

Even if I take all three point lights, max out their brightness, point them all at a single surface, and max out the ambient light --- that surface will still show up black when pointed directly at the screen.

Like this - lower left corner - the connectors are dark gray, the cabinet is light gray, the back plate is the same light gray as the cabinet...yet the connectors show white, the cabinet shows black, and the back plate shows white.

As you might notice, the 'dark side' of this is the front...and yet, all 3 lights are facing the front. The left facing side, conversely, is pure white despite not having any lights directed at it. I have all 3 lights cranked up to max ambient, and you can see how light the problem-surfaces got...meanwhile lots of other stuff got washed out and is way too light.

Apparently "RealView Graphics" is what makes everything look...not real. Turned it off, deleted all my lights, turned down the ambient a bit, and the crazy contrast went away, everything looks the color it should, I'm happy now.

Someone should really look into that feature...and also into the definition of "Real".